The Los Angeles Rams announced that they placed three players on injured reserve in Andrew Whitworth, Taylor Rapp and Kai Forbath while signing veteran kicker Matt Gay.
With Forbath going down with an ankle injury in the Rams’ Week 10 win over the Seattle Seahawks, Gay will likely take over kicking duties moving forward, or at least compete with Austin MacGinnis, who is on L.A.’s practice squad.
If Gay is the Rams’ kicker in Week 11 then his first game will come against his former team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, this Monday. Gay was drafted by Tampa Bay in 2019 and in one season with the team he made 27 of 35 field-goal attempts and 43 of 48 extra-point attempts while playing in all 16 games.
Gay has spent a majority of the 2019 season on the Indianapolis Colts’ practice squad, although he was waived on Nov. 6.
The win over the Seahawks proved to be costly for the Rams with two key contributors in Whitworth and Rapp going down with injuries.
Whitworth was forced to be carted off after suffering a torn MCL and PCL. Luckily though, his ACL remained intact so Sean McVay is confident he will be able to return this season, via Stu Jackson of TheRams.com:
“Whitworth had a grade 3 MCL/PCL, it will probably be something where he’s out for a handful of time,” McVay said. “Whether that be six weeks, whether that ends up being eight weeks, you don’t really know. … We were all worried it was for sure going to be season ending, and that’s not going to be the case. So, the big fella came out with about as good as it could be given the way that it looked, but we will place him on IR at some point this week.”
Joseph Noteboom, who played left tackle after Whitworth went down, is expected to be the team’s starter at the position for the time being.
Rapp also suffered a knee injury, but his is a grade 2 MCL sprain and he is only expected to miss 3-4 weeks.
